The Iraqi paramilitary Hashd Shaabi artillery on Wednesday carried out cross-border shelling on positions of the Islamic State (IS) militants inside Syria, leaving a total of 43 militants killed or wounded, like reported by xinhuanet.com.

“In a preemptive operation, the artillery carried out precise shelling on a hideout, where many IS militants were gathering, in al-Baghouz in Syria, killing or wounding more than 43 terrorists as well as destroying the terrorists’ vehicles and fuel stores,” Hashd Shaabi quoted Qasim Muslih, leader of Hashd Shaabi brigades in Iraq’s western province of Anbar, as saying.

“The shelling came after receiving accurate intelligence reports indicating that the Daesh (IS group) militants were preparing for an attack on (Iraqi) security forces on the border between Iraq and Syria,” Muslih said.

Earlier, the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces, deployed near the Iraqi-Syrian border, have reinforced their presence near the border line with Syria after the IS seized late last year positions of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the Syrian side near the border with Iraq.

The security situation in Iraq has been dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country in late 2017.

However, groups and individuals of extremist militants melted or regrouped in urban and rugged areas, and are carrying out attacks against the security forces and civilians despite operations from time to time to hunt them down.

Kurdish-led fighters overran the last village held by the Islamic State group in Syria on Wednesday, confining its once vast cross-border “caliphate” to two small hamlets, a war monitor said according to ekurd.net.

It is the culmination of a broad offensive launched by the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF last September with US-led coalition support in which they have reduced the jihadists’ last enclave on the north bank of the Euphrates valley near the Iraqi border to a tiny rump.

The capture of the village of Baghouz leaves the few remaining diehard IS fighters holed up in scattered homesteads among the irrigated fields and orchards on the north bank of the Euphrates Valley.

“Search operations are continuing in Baghouz to find any IS fighters who are still hiding,” the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

“The SDF will now have to push on into the farmland around Baghouz.”

“Around 4,900 people, mostly women and children but including 470 IS fighters, have fled the jihadists’ fast dwindling enclave since Monday, Abdel Rahman said late on Tuesday.

Of those 3,500 surrendered to the advancing SDF on Tuesday alone.

They were evacuated on dozens of trucks chartered by the SDF.

The fall of Baghouz follows the SDF’s capture of the enclave’s sole town of Hajin and the villages of Al-Shaafa and Sousa in recent weeks.

The new wave of departures means that nearly 27,000 people have left former IS areas since early December, including almost 1,800 jihadists who have surrendered, the Observatory said.

The whereabouts of the ultra-elusive IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has made just once public appearance — in Iraq’s then IS-held second city Mosul in 2014 — are unknown.

It is a far cry from the jihadists’ peak in 2014, when they overran large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq and Baghdadi proclaimed a “caliphate” in areas under their control.

The gains have come at the cost of heavy losses for the mainly Kurdish fighters of the SDF and despite their sense of betrayal by their US ally after President Donald Trump made the surprise announcement last month that Washington would withdraw all its troops.

Washington has for years supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). But U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced the pullout from Syria.

The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.

Neighbouring Turkey has threatened repeatedly to launch a cross-border operation to crush the Kurdish fighters of the SDF and the autonomous region they have set up in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) in areas of northern and northeastern Syria under their control.

Turkish troops had been held at bay by the intervention of US troops who set up observation posts along the border and mounted joint patrols with Kurdish fighters.

But with those troops gone, the Kurds fear they will be exposed to the full might of the Turkish military.

In 2013, the PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013.

Turkey fears the creation of a Kurdish autonomous region or Kurdish state in Syrian Kurdistan could encourage separatism amongst its own Kurds, according to analysts.

Ankara has previously launched two operations in Syrian Kurdistan.

On August 24, 2016 Turkish troops entered the Syrian territory in a sudden incursion which resulted in the occupation of Jarablus after IS jihadists left the city without resistance. Most of Turkish operations were focused only against the Kurdish forces.

In 2016, the Turkish troops entered northern Syria in an area some 100 km east of Afrin to stop the Kurdish YPG forces from extending areas under their control and connecting Syrian Kurdistan’s Kobani and Hasaka in the east with Afrin canton in the west.

In January 2018, Turkish military forces backed pro-Ankara Syrian mercenary fighters to clear the YPG from its northwestern enclave of Afrin. In March 2018, the operation was completed with the capture of the Kurdish city of Afrin.

The flags of Turkey and Syrian rebel groups were raised in the Kurdish Afrin city and a statue of Kurdish hero Kawa, a symbol of resistance against oppressors, was torn down.

Residents of the Kurdish city and Human right groups accuse Turkey and pro-Ankara fighters of kidnappings for ransom, armed robberies and torture.

Pro-government fighters of Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi thwarted on Wednesday a planned attack by Islamic State militants on security forces in a village on the Iraqi-Syrian border, leaving 43 terrorists dead and wounded, like reported by iraqinews.com.

“Iraqi artillery targeted a hotbed grouping IS militants in the village of Baghuz on the Iraqi-Syrian border after receiving intelligence reports about a plot by those extremists to attack security forces,” Almaalomah news website quoted Commander of Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi operations in Western Anbar Qassim Mosleh as saying.

“The artillery shelling left 43 IS militants dead and wounded, and destroyed a large number of weaponry and armored vehicles that were planned to be used in the attack on the security forces,” he added.

Islamic State continues to launch sporadic attacks across Iraq against troops. Security reports indicate that the militant group still poses a threat against stability in the country.

Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi, an alliance of volunteer Shia paramilitary forces, actively backed the Iraqi government’s military campaign against IS since 2014, when they were formed upon a top Shia clergy edict to counter the Sunni Jihadist group.

They won official recognition as a national force in late 2016, becoming under the command of the prime minister, who is also the supreme commander of the armed forces.

Iraqi troops killed a senior Islamic State leader during a security campaign in Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said according to iraqinews.com.

“A special force of the Samara Operations Command managed to kill a terrorist during a security operation in northwestern the Dhuluiya airport, north of Baghdad,” IKH News quoted the Security Media Center as saying in a statement.

The troops, according to the statement, “found three bombs, explosive materials and a gun with the slain terrorist.”

The Iraqi capital has seen almost daily bombings and armed attacks against security members, paramilitary troops and civilians since the Iraqi government launched a wide-scale campaign to retake Islamic State-occupied areas in 2016. Though most of the daily bombings go without a claim of responsibility, Islamic State is thought to be behind many.

Iraq declared victory over Islamic State in December 2017 with the help of a US-led alliance, having retaken all the territory captured by the extremists in 2014 and 2015.

Isolated cells believed to be linked to the Islamic State group remain active in some parts of the country. In recent weeks, suspected Islamic State insurgents have carried out several attacks targeting security forces and civilians across Iraq.

According to IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis, the airstrikes were carried out in three waves and targeted military targets belonging to Iran’s Quds Force in Syria, including weapons storage sites, a site at Damascus International Airport, an Iranian intelligence site and an Iranian training camp.

In addition, several Syrian air defense batteries were struck after dozens of anti-aircraft missiles were fired toward the Israeli jets.

“During the attack, dozens of Syrian surface-to-air missiles were fired, despite the clear warnings expressed [by Israel] to refrain from attacking,” the IDF said in a statement. “As a result, a number of Syrian air defense batteries were also attacked.”

Syria’s SANA news agency quoted a military source as saying that regime forces destroyed most of the missiles before they struck their targets.

“Our air defenses dealt with the situation and intercepted the hostile missiles, downing most of them before reaching their targets as they continue their heroic response to the aggression,” the report said, adding that the “Israeli aggression was carried out from above the Lebanese territory, the Galilee and Lake Tiberias, using various types of weapons.”

Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Russia’s defense control center as saying that Syria’s air defenses destroyed more than 30 cruise missiles and guided bombs fired by Israel and that four Syrian servicemen were killed in the strikes.

Israel’s military said the large-scale strikes came as a response to Iranian forces in Syria of firing a missile with the intention of hitting the northern Golan on Sunday. The missile was intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system.

According to Manelis, the missile that was fired toward Israel was an Iranian-made surface-to-surface missile whose launch had been prepared months in advance.

“This is not the sort of missile that is fired spontaneously,” he said, adding that “they took advantage of the opportunity yesterday to launch it towards the northern Golan Heights where there are both civilian and military targets.”

Manelis told reporters that the missile was fired from around the capital of Damascus in an area which Israel had been assured “by the relevant parties” that Iranian forces would not be found.

“The firing of the missile yesterday, a launch that could have killed civilians, was fired by Iranians out of Damascus within an area that we were promised that there would be no Iranians,” he said. “The bottom line is that such a missile fired by Iranians from an area where there they are not supposed to be is an Iranian attempt to attack Israel, to endanger civilians lives and military targets.”

Manelis stressed that the missile launch on Sunday and the Iranian target struck early on Monday showed just how deep Iran’s entrenchment in Syria is.

“This is the third time that Iran has tried to attack Israel in the past year, he said, adding, “Iran is exploiting Syria, and Syria is paying a heavy price for facilitating Iranian actions.”

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit also said in a statement that “the Iranian attack on Israeli territory yesterday is yet another clear proof of the intention behind the attempts to establish Iran in Syria and the danger they pose to the State of Israel and regional stability. The IDF will continue to act decisively and firmly against the Iranian establishment in Syria.”

Following the attack, the IDF announced that the Hermon skiing site would be closed to visitors on Monday. Residents of the Golan were told to maintain their routine on Monday until further instructions from the IDF Home Front Command were issued.

The commander of the Iranian Air Force said on Monday that the country was prepared for a decisive war with Israel, “which will bring an end to the IDF’s attacks on Syria.”

“Our armed forces are prepared for a war that will bring the destruction of Israel,” he said, according to media reports.

Iraqi Shi’ite militias have been notified by the US forces to evacuate several military fortresses in eastern Mosul, north of Iraq, said a local source according to basnews.com.

At least five military fortresses are under the control of Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi around Bartella (some 20 kilometers east of Mosul), said Ali Mulham, a Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) representative in the area.

He told BasNews that the US forces are expected to be stationed in the military fortresses after Hashd al-Shaabi’s evacuation.

Mulham claimed that the Shi’ite militias are given less than 24 hours to move their equipments out.

It was not clear if the US army is moving troops from Syria to the region as part of its plan to withdraw from Syria, or it is another relocation of troops to limit Iran’s hegemony on the region.

Iraqi Prime Minsiter Adil Abdul-Mahdi said on Tuesday that the issue of whether the Shi’ite militias of Hashd al-Shaabi should continue or be dissolved, is an internal issue of Iraq, like reported by basnews.com.

The remark came after media reports claimed that Washington had recently urged Baghdad to disarm the Shi’ite militias.

Hashd al-Shaabi was established after the Islamic State (IS) attacked Iraq in 2014 and it began recruiting among Iraqi Shi’ites with a fatwa issued by Iraq’s top religious leader of the Muslim sect. Hashd al-Shaabi is know for having close ties with Iran.

However, Abdul-Mahdi said during his weekly news conference that the reports were not true, and no such requests were made by the US.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s National Security Council (NSC), led by John Bolton, urged the Pentagon to provide the White House with military options to strike Iran after attacks in September 2018 near U.S. assets in Iraq believed to be carried out by Tehran-allied Shiite militias, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)reported.

According to the Journal, “The Pentagon complied with the NSC’s request to develop options for striking Iran, the officials said. But it isn’t clear if the proposals were provided to the White House, whether Mr. Trump knew of the request or whether serious plans for a U.S. strike against Iran took shape at that time.”

In November, the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported that the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces/Units (PMF/U), also known as Hashd al Shaabi, are “likely” responsible for the mortar attack on Baghdad’s diplomatic quarter that houses the American embassy and rockets fired at the Basrah Airport near the U.S. Consulate General there in September. The attacks resulted in no casualties.

Baghdad has legalized the PMF, an umbrella organization for mainly Shiite militias linked to Iran, as a component of the U.S.-assisted and trained Iraqi security forces.

Citing the September attacks, the Pentagon OIG deemed the PMF a threat to U.S. troops in Iraq. Nevertheless, the NSC request for options to strike Iran over the PMF-linked attack generated “concern at the Pentagon and State Department,” WSJ learned from unnamed current and former U.S. officials.

“It definitely rattled people,” a former senior U.S. administration official told the Journalof the request. “People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.”

WSJ noted:

The request [to strike Iran], which hasn’t been previously reported, came after militants fired three mortars into Baghdad’s sprawling diplomatic quarter, home to the U.S. Embassy, on a warm night in early September. The shells—launched by a group aligned with Iran—landed in an open lot and harmed no one.But they triggered unusual alarm in Washington, where Mr. Trump’s national security team led by John Bolton conducted a series of meetings to discuss a forceful U.S. response, including what many saw as the unusual request for options to strike Iran.

Garrett Marquis, an NSC spokesman, explained that the request was part of options provided to the president on how to handle threats.

The NSC “coordinates policy and provides the president with options to anticipate and respond to a variety of threats,” he said. “We continue to review the status of our personnel following attempted attacks on our embassy in Baghdad and our Basra consulate, and we will consider a full range of options to preserve their safety and our interests.”

Bolton supports President Trump’s confrontational approach to Iran.

“As national security adviser, Mr. Bolton is charged with providing a range of diplomatic, military and economic advice to the president. Former U.S. officials said it was unnerving that the NSC asked for far-reaching military options to strike Iran in response to attacks that caused little damage and no injuries,” WSJ acknowledged.

The Trump administration has vowed to combat Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East and beyond. Under Trump, the U.S. has intensified pressure on Tehran, imposing a wave of sanctions.

Mira Ricardel, Bolton’s deputy at the time of the request, reportedly described the attacks attributed to Shiite militias as an “act of war,” adding that the “the U.S. had to respond decisively,” the Journal reported, citing an anonymous person familiar with the meeting said.

“The United States will hold the regime in Tehran accountable for any attack that results in injury to our personnel or damage to United States government facilities,” the White House said in response to the September attacks linked to Iran, vowing to respond “swiftly and decisively.”

“Iran will be held accountable for those incidents,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CNN on September 21, referring to the incidents.

“They’re going to be held accountable,” he stressed. “If they’re responsible for the arming and training of these militias, we’re going to go to the source.”

Last November, a spokesman for the Pentagon told Breitbart News that combating the Iran-allied Shiite militias is not part of the United States mission in Iraq despite the menace posed by the PMF, as described by several Trump administration officials and lawmakers.

PMF fighters have earned the praise of the U.S. military over their contribution to the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). Not all PMF fighters are linked to Iran. The force also includes Sunni, Kurdish, and Christian fighters.

Israel’s airstrike on what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed were Iranian “weapons depots” at Syria’s Damascus airport over the weekend may have also targeted and wounded members of Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership, according to a report by Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.

The report quotes sources in the IRGC in an exclusive statement to Al-Jarida saying the Israeli attack targeted a meeting of several members of the IRGC’s elite Quds force, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Syrian army head discussing a future joint offensive by Moscow and Ankara against the Al Nusra front in Idlib province, considered the last major stronghold for Syrian rebels – in addition to Iranian military installations and weapons depots.

The attack reportedly took place just after the meeting ended as the groups were leaving. At least two IRGC officers and a Hezbollah officials were seriously injured in the strike, as well as several officers from the Syrian army, according to the report.

Netanyahu on Sunday said Israel has been behind hundreds of strikes against Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria in remarks confirmed by Israeli Defense Forces outgoing Chief-of-Staff Gadi Eizenkot who emphasized the IDF’s victories against Iran and Hezbollah under his leadership over the course of four years.

“The [Israel Defense Forces] has on hundreds of occasions attacked targets of Iran and Hezbollah,” Netanyahu said on Sunday at the opening of his weekly cabinet meeting, just two days after the IAF strike.“Just in the last 36 hours did the [Israel Air Force] attack Iranian warehouses with Iranian weapons at the international airport in Damascus,” the premier said.On Friday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the country’s air defenses intercepted missiles fired at the Damascus international airport at around 11:00 p.m. local time, with a military source attributing the attack to Israel.The source claimed that a warehouse belonging to Syria’s ministry of transport was hit and damaged.The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said that the strikes targeted “two areas hosting military positions of Iranian forces and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.”

Israel gave no initial comment on Friday’s reported strikes, but has previously acknowledged carrying out hundreds of attacks in Syria over the years against what it says are Iranian military targets and advanced arms deliveries to Hezbollah.

On Saturday, the Syrian foreign ministry said that Israel was able to “get away” with such raids in the country because it is backed by the United States.

The United States has said repeatedly that it will continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Hezbollah, including through targeted strikes in Syria, in the wake of its decision to remove American forces from the country.

The abruptly announced decision to quit Syria had taken US allies by surprise, and Israel worried over whether Iran would be left with free rein to operate there and whether Russia would respond to its calls to limit it.

Netanyahu has vowed to intensify Israeli action in the wake of the United States’ withdrawal.

Turkey and Russia have been unable to rein an al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that has emerged as the terrorist organization’s strongest branch and the most dominant jihadi group in the country, Fox News reported Wednesday.

Although they are on opposite sides of the war, pro-Syrian opposition Turkey and dictator Bashar al-Assad’s ally Russia reached an agreement late last year to establish a horseshoe-shaped buffer zone in Idlib free of jihadis and their heavy weapons by October, to no avail. The Russia-Turkey pact is part of mutual efforts to end the war in Syria — raging since March 2011.

Known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the al-Qaeda-linked group continues to wreak havoc in Idlib, the jihadis organization’s primary stronghold in the region.

“HTS has proven itself to be the strongest military force in the Idlib pocket in recent weeks. Their rapid advance is a cause for concern because they are de-stabilizing efforts to bring a political settlement to the last rebel enclave. Their extremist ideology also makes it more likely that the Russian and Assadist forces will have an excuse to launch a full-scale offensive, which will have devastating humanitarian consequences,” Alan Mendoza, founder and executive director of the U.S. policy think tank the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News.

In recent days, the al-Qaeda affiliates conquered the strategic town of Darat Izza, located close to two main highways in Syria used to move fighters and supplies within the country and along the Turkish border.

Fox News noted:

An Al Qaeda-linked jihadist group Hay’at Tahir al-Sham (HTS) is gaining swaths of territory in the northern province of Idlib, usurping control from Turkish-backed groups connected to the National Liberation Front (NLF). The goals of the group, otherwise known as the “Organization for the Liberation of the Levant,” are centered on dominating as much territory as possible ahead of planned talks between Russia and Turkey, to bring a final end to the almost eight-year Syrian civil war. Based on a previous agreement, Turkey was supposed to have reigned in the extremist outfit – now raising concerns it may not have the capacity to do so.

Citing several analysts, Fox News noted that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s near single-minded focus on pushing the U.S.-allied Syrian Kurds out of territory bordering Turkey had rendered Ankara incapable of addressing the al-Qaeda threat in Idlib.

According to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), HTS has between 12,000 and 15,000 fighters and is the most dominant of all rebel groups operating in Syria.

Formerly known as al-Nusra Front and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, HTS claims to have cut its allegiance with al-Qaeda, but several experts have dismissed the claim as deceptive.

The U.S. Department of State has officially designated HTS a foreign terrorist organization in May 2018.

“If HTS acts as a spoiler to the [Russia-Turkey] agreement on the ground, this will probably lead to one of two scenarios: either Turkey and the NLF launch military action against HTS, or Russia will seize the opportunity with the support of the [Assad] regime and its allies to enter Idlib,” Nawar Oliver, an analyst for the Turkey-based Omran Center predicted in October, according to Al Jazeera.